6.4.6 Lebbeus’ Legacy: Seeing the Woods for the Trees

“We can safely suppose that it is based not on stability but on instability, on change from one form into another – perhaps even from one language of form into another”. Woods, 2004.

Lebbeus Woods interrogated the tension between architecture, geopolitics, and geomechanical forces. This study interrogates the tension between architecture, geopolitics, and biochemical and ecological forces. Thus, on the surface, ours are fields of inquiry that are spatially, temporally, and, largely methodologically independent. Yet, philosophically, many are the parallels in our respective conclusions, both of which harness a “revolution in knowledge” (Woods, 2001, p.15) to confront “disparate realities” that arise when “things of different orders meet” (Ibid, p.13). Upon exploring “complexly transformative space” (Woods, 2004, p.45) Woods found change “is inevitable”, for as materials “are affected by disturbances” they are “reborn” in “continuous cycles” (Ibid, p.47), thus “the creative dialogue between opposing forces, and most especially, between destruction and construction, between death and life, as equally vital elements of existence (Moss, 2004, p.18) evokes “the possibility of a new collaboration between the forces of nature and of the human” (Woods, 2004, p.44). Further areas of agreement between the conclusions of Woods and this study include acknowledging that the ‘forces of nature’ are beyond human control; we need work with, not against those forces; the process thereof necessitating the creation of principles, not prescriptions, beginnings, not conclusions; and the union of determinism to nondeterminism. But, as Woods noted, “So abhorrent is the idea of the fall, so quick the rush to erase its evidence, so single-minded the effort to rebuild the sameness, that the reality of the fall itself and the nature of the transformations it has brought about are obscured” (2004, p.108). Arguably, the statement thereof is as relevant to both press and policy responses to wildfire in the WUI, as to historical reconstruction in the aftermath of war, earthquakes, storm surges, and hurricanes in Sarajevo, San Francisco, and Havana. However, that upon rising from its ashes, no matter the “instinct to recapture something irretrievably lost” (Ibid), the metaphorical phoenix reaffirms not “a past” order, but provides of a platform for change, is a proposition that while arguably anticipatory of our architectural and urban future, remains no less radical today, than during Wood’s lifetime.

Although, qualitative research, and especially that which relates to areas that are measured by subjective, as well as objective measures presents greater complexity in its replicability than, as a rule, does quantitative research, that, upon lengthy independent examination of the problems and potentialities which reside at the interface of natural and human architectural and urban systems, both Woods and this study drew complimentary outcomes suggests our findings may represent universal truths.